OTTAWA CITIZEN, by Joanne Laucius

The City of Ottawa’s built heritage committee has approved a convoluted manoeuvre to protect priority properties from demolition in the face of new provincial legislation aimed at building more homes faster.

Building new homes sometimes means demolishing old buildings. The Ford government’s Bill 23 has set a tight timeline for designating properties under the Ontario Heritage Act.

Bill 23 also aims to shrink the number of properties on municipal heritage registers. Ottawa has the province’s largest such register with 4,600 properties listed.

Being on the municipal register offers a measure of protection for properties that have not been designated under the Heritage Act, but are still of potential interest. If a property owner wishes to demolish a building on the register, the city has 60 days to decide whether to protect the building from demolition by designating it under the Heritage Act.

Under Bill 23, properties can stay on a municipal heritage register for only two years. If a municipal council doesn’t issue a notice of intention to designate a property under the Heritae Act by the end of 2024, that property must be removed from the register and it can’t be re-listed for five years. But a “new” listing can still be on the register for two years.

The de-listing and re-listing strategy will give heritage planners a little extra time, said David Flemming, chair of Heritage Ottawa’s advocacy committee.

“Most of them (buildings on the heritage register) will never be developed. It’s a way of dealing with this overwhelming job heritage planners face.”

The convoluted plan approved Tuesday involves removing almost all 4,600 properties from the city register by the end of the year in batches, then re-listing a couple dozen top-priority properties in January, thus buying two more years of time for those properties while fulfilling Bill 23 requirements.

Here’s how the plan would work.

Step 1: Of 4,600 properties on Ottawa’s register, about 700 have already been identified as potential candidates for designation, said Lesley Collins, the city’s program manager for heritage planning.

Step: 2: De-list most of the 4,600 properties by the end of the year in batches. On Tuesday, the committee approved delisting 465 properties in rural areas and outer suburbs. Over the course of 2024, thousands more from other parts of Ottawa will also be de-listed.

“We have to take them off (the register) because that’s what the legislation says we do,” Collins said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to keep working through that list of 700. They just won’t have interim protection in the meantime.”

Step 3: Re-populate Ottawa’s heritage register with priority properties next January, giving those properties two years’ worth of protection. Collins estimates about 24 properties will be brought forward.

Step 4:  Maintain an interim register of all 4,600 properties so that information — such as when a listed property was built, who built it and other historical details — remains available to the public.

“When the register was created through the heritage inventory project, we collected a vast amount of data about these properties,” Collins said. “We don’t want that to go to waste because we think it’s very interesting and useful data for the public to have access to.”

Meanwhile, heritage planners will bring forward a report on heritage conservation districts this spring, with the goal of approving at least one new district.

Ottawa already has 21 heritage districts ranging from single streets to the entire village of Rockcliffe Park. Getting a heritage conservation district designation under the Heritage Act will offer protection to all buildings of significance inside that district. However, getting that designation is time-consuming.

“We might look at listing all of the properties (on the heritage register) within that study area to provide interim protection while we’re undertaking that study,” Collins said.

The plan to de-list and re-list properties will create work for heritage planning staff, said Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Rawlson King, chair of the built heritage committee.

“It’s frustrating, but necessary,” King said. “It’s an innovative way to respond to the legislative changes that we’ve seen around Bill 23, and it’s a made-in-Ottawa solution that ensures that at least we retain the information.”

Meanwhile, the countdown is on as city staff aim to designate 25-30 individual properties under the Heritage Act before the end of the year — about five or six times the usual number.

The plan to de-list and re-list heritage properties in Ottawa will be before city council on Feb. 21.

Read this story in its entirety on the Ottawa Citizen website.